Mass bike ride planned for Frome Street
Bike SA is calling for cyclists to join a mass ride of the new separated Frome Street bike lanes to demonstrate support for the controversial project when it opens next Wednesday morning.
Cyclists will gather at the South Parklands end of Frome Street to cycle along the new lane at 8am.
Bike SA chief executive Christian Haag said the ride would help demonstrate support for the controversial separated bike lane project.
“We’d love to see a couple of thousand people,” he said.
“We know that 60 per cent of Australians say that they’d ride more if they thought it was safer to do so, and we know that separated bike lanes provide that level of safety.
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“Those naysayers will see that it’s an important addition to the Adelaide City transport network.”
Councillor Anne Moran will bring a motion to next Tuesday’s council meeting for the newly constructed garden beds in the parking lane of Frome Street to be taken out, in order to allow for the parking lane to become a driving lane during peak hour.
The Frome Street bikeway will open with one bike lane beside the curb, one parking lane with planter beds beside that and one driving lane in both directions.
“If you truly want to make the city a bike city, my scheme accommodates cars when they need the lane and leaves the off-street bike path exactly the same,” she said.
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She said she had been in contact with construction workers on Frome Street, who told her the planter boxes could easily be lifted from the road.
“You could do it on lots of other roads and really the only people that suffer are the people that want to park during rush hour, and I don’t think people are expecting to park in rush hour on streets anyway.”
Moran’s proposal would retain the planter beds until after the Velo-City global cycling event at the end of this month.
But Christian Haag said giving over the parking lane to driving at peak times would diminish safety for cyclists.
“What’s the point of having a separated bike lane if it’s not separated?” he said.
“I think that that is inappropriate and unnecessary.”
Haag said giving over the parking lane to driving would be far more complicated than merely lifting the planter boxes from the road.
“Clearly, any change to the engineering of that space would need to be done at the beginning.
“We have this rather odd situation where, in all likelihood, the existing entire bikeway network and planter boxes would need to be removed, the road would need to be resurfaced while the council undertake the re-engineering and the redesign.”
Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood said the council should be open to all options.
“Council should keep an open mind to the best way to balance all commuter needs. We will carefully monitor the bike lane and consider alternatives based on factual data and consultation on stage two,” he said.
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